Click here to view this media Rachel Maddow explains what you have to do to be a member of “The Gingrich Caucus” and you’re a neo-con that never met a war you didn’t like but can’t seem to get your talking points straight on Libya since you hate anything a Democratic president does more. Step 1—Demand U.S. military intervention in Libya. Step 2—After President Obama intervenes in Libya, oppose military intervention. Step 3—Hope no one remembers what you did in step 1.
Continue reading …Today's starter topic: Left-wing attack group Media Matters is vowing to make its attacks on Fox News personal : Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.) Brock said Media Matters also plans to run a broad campaign against Fox’s parent company, News Corp., an effort which most likely will involve opening a United Kingdom arm in London to attack the company’s interests there. The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.
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Film star became famous for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock classics such as Strangers on a Train and Rope The actor Farley Granger, most famous for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and Rope, has died of natural causes at the age of 85 in New York. In the 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train, Granger starred alongside Robert Walker as a nice guy tennis player who becomes embroiled in a reciprocal murder scheme. In Rope, released three years earlier, he starred as one of two students of a dubious professor, played by James Stewart, who are persuaded to carry out an elaborate homicide. In 2007 he released his memoir, Include Me Out, in which he told of his bisexuality and flings with Ava Gardner, Patricia Neal, Shelley Winters and the composer Leonard Bernstein. His long-time partner Robert Calhoun, with whom he had been in a relationship since 1963, died three years ago. Alfred Hitchcock Thriller United States Ian J Griffiths guardian.co.uk
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Is British TV still the envy of the world? In our series discussing the health of UK television, Mark Lawson examines the current state of UK television drama • The state of British TV: entertainment The most telling detail about the current state of TV drama is that, within living memory, it used to be habitual for the Brits to patronise American television fiction. The yanks were OK for glossy shows about cops with a distinctive physical characteristic – bald Kojak, fat Cannon, wheelchair-user Ironside – but the serious stuff was made here: classy costume dramas, the bold and campaigning Play for Today. Viewers, reviewers and executives who remember when the phrase “wall-to-wall Dallas” served as a terrible warning of the possible consequences of the Americanisation of British drama regard the current era with astonishment. Now an envy of American television drama is one of the governing emotions at UK networks, while polls of the greatest ever shows are dominated by The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, The West Wing and other awe-inspiring imports. And, revealingly, the three most depressing aspects of our home-grown programming all stand in stark contrast to the situation in the US – under-representation of ethnic minorities, short runs, and uniformity. Yet against these depressing tendencies can be set reasons to be cheerful about British small-screen fiction – including the joy of ad-free TV, the standard of acting, and hits such as last summer’s Sherlock. The weaknesses of British television Race : Although sparked by accident, through a comment in an interview, the row over the almost wholly white casting in ITV1′s Midsomer Murders has fortuitously exposed a crisis in British television. The dominance of dramas set either in the actual past (all those Austen and Dickens adaptations) or a make-believe present (such as Midsomer) means that our drama is often criminally unrepresentative and star acting talent – Adrian Lester, Sophie Okonedo, Chiwetel Ejiofor – is driven to America for better parts. Series length : American TV companies have the courage and funding to back the big vision: committing to 20-episode runs with quick-fire options on further runs. In the UK, partly because of the tradition of single authorship rather than team-writing, commissioning is too often short and cautious, so that when a hit emerges – Sherlock, Downton Abbey – enthusiastic viewers/advertisers have a very lengthy wait for more. Yet, paradoxically, once a franchise is established, we’re too loathe to let it go, even when (Taggart, Silent Witness, Midsomer) the central actors leave. Uniformity : And then there is the problem of uniformity. Literally so. It seems almost obligatory for UK drama series to involve either cops or docs: even Peter Bowker, one of our most original writers, has succumbed to the surgical-procedural with Monroe. Yet notice that the fabled recent American series have unconventional settings (a funeral parlour, a 60s ad agency, the White House) or unexpected heroes: Mafia gangster, corrupt politicians and cops. The strengths of British television Sherlock : As yet another adaptation of our most famous detective, Sherlock sounded potentially conservative. Yet the series combined high-class plot and dialogue from Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, with visually innovative direction and smart casting – including spotting that Benedict Cumberbatch was on the cusp of greatness – to create a drama that combined British tradition with American pizzazz. Kudos : Despite recent sci-flop Outsiders, Stephen Garrett’s and Jane Featherstone’s independent production company remains aptly named, having re-energised TV drama in recent years with high-gloss, high-concept series including Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Hustle and Spooks. The latter, in particular, has shown how to combine compelling narratives with serious political and psychological ideas, while consistently refreshing a long-running franchise. Acting : One of the joys of watching UK TV dramas is the sheer depth of acting talent available: from veterans (Sheila Hancock, Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi) through the generation heading for knighthoods (Simon Russell Beale) to the younger set who immediately impress (Hattie Morahan, Benedict Cumberbatch). With the single exception of racial inequality – see above – casting options in Britain are consistently greater than in the US. Realism : Ever since Play for Today and the early work of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, British TV fiction has led the way in quasi-documentary or journalistic pieces. The biggest weakness of the American product is that almost everything tends towards a high gloss. In the UK, the greater strength of television documentary sees directors – most recently, Peter Kosminsky with Channel 4′s The Promise – applying their factual background to fiction. Ad-free TV : Although much great TV drama, in both the US and the UK, has been screened with commercial interruptions, creating a narrative that climaxes every quarter of an hour is a challenge to writers, actors and viewers. Authors and audiences here are lucky to have, at the BBC, the opportunity of following a story straight through, without a break. Drama Television Mark Lawson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Men wearing suicide belts are holding an unknown number of people at a government building in Tikrit, officials say Gunmen wearing suicide bomb belts are holding local legislators and employees hostage at a government building in central Iraq, officials have said. A policeman and a senior Iraqi intelligence official said it was unknown how many people were being held at the Salahuddin provincial council headquarters, in Tikrit. Police immediately imposed a curfew to prevent all road and pedestrian traffic in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. The intelligence official compared the attack to a deadly siege at a church in Baghdad last autumn. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorised to release the information. Iraq Middle East guardian.co.uk
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Thirty-eight patients in south Wales underwent surgery with instruments used on person at high risk of fatal brain condition Thirty-eight patients who underwent surgery with instruments previously used on a patient at high risk of the fatal brain condition CJD have been warned they may contract the disease. Health authorities say the likelihood of the long-incubating Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease having spread is low. However, the concerns over possible sterilisation problems at a hospital in south Wales in 2007 echo those raised at Middlesbrough general hospital in 2002 when 24 patients were told they had been exposed to risk . The hospital is not being named but it is overseen by the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board, which includes hospitals in Swansea, Maesteg and Port Talbot. A statement from Public Health Wales on Monday said: “Letters were sent to those at risk after it became apparent that a patient who underwent surgery in a hospital in the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board area in 2007 was at high risk of the disease. “All surgical instruments used on the patient were removed from use when the patient’s history became known, and all patients operated on with the same instruments in the interim have now been informed.” Jörg Hoffmann, its consultant in communicable disease control, said: “In this incident, we do not have a single confirmed case of CJD. However, we do have one patient who was at high risk and 38 people at extremely low risk. “We know that all the surgical instruments used on this group of patients were cleaned, disinfected and sterilised normally. However, it is possible that the proteins that cause CJD, known as prions, survived these routine sterilisation procedures so an extremely small risk of transmission remains. “We have identified and written to all patients concerned to make them aware of the extremely low risk. They have been offered information and support and a helpline has been set up for anyone who has received a letter and has further questions.” He said there was no risk to anybody else. The statement did not say how it had emerged that the initial patient had been discovered to be at high risk of CJD, nor what type of surgery he or she had undergone. For decades there has been concern over the possibility of CJD, or its variant – originally caused by eating contaminated meat from BSE-infected cows – being transmitted through surgery. There have, however, only been six cases worldwide of any form of CJD being transmitted in this way. The Middlesbrough case led to a UK overhaul of guidance on the quarantining of instruments used on “risky” patients and the handling of such cases. Health Wales NHS James Meikle guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Thirty-eight patients in south Wales underwent surgery with instruments used on person at high risk of fatal brain condition Thirty-eight patients who underwent surgery with instruments previously used on a patient at high risk of the fatal brain condition CJD have been warned they may contract the disease. Health authorities say the likelihood of the long-incubating Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease having spread is low. However, the concerns over possible sterilisation problems at a hospital in south Wales in 2007 echo those raised at Middlesbrough general hospital in 2002 when 24 patients were told they had been exposed to risk . The hospital is not being named but it is overseen by the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board, which includes hospitals in Swansea, Maesteg and Port Talbot. A statement from Public Health Wales on Monday said: “Letters were sent to those at risk after it became apparent that a patient who underwent surgery in a hospital in the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board area in 2007 was at high risk of the disease. “All surgical instruments used on the patient were removed from use when the patient’s history became known, and all patients operated on with the same instruments in the interim have now been informed.” Jörg Hoffmann, its consultant in communicable disease control, said: “In this incident, we do not have a single confirmed case of CJD. However, we do have one patient who was at high risk and 38 people at extremely low risk. “We know that all the surgical instruments used on this group of patients were cleaned, disinfected and sterilised normally. However, it is possible that the proteins that cause CJD, known as prions, survived these routine sterilisation procedures so an extremely small risk of transmission remains. “We have identified and written to all patients concerned to make them aware of the extremely low risk. They have been offered information and support and a helpline has been set up for anyone who has received a letter and has further questions.” He said there was no risk to anybody else. The statement did not say how it had emerged that the initial patient had been discovered to be at high risk of CJD, nor what type of surgery he or she had undergone. For decades there has been concern over the possibility of CJD, or its variant – originally caused by eating contaminated meat from BSE-infected cows – being transmitted through surgery. There have, however, only been six cases worldwide of any form of CJD being transmitted in this way. The Middlesbrough case led to a UK overhaul of guidance on the quarantining of instruments used on “risky” patients and the handling of such cases. Health Wales NHS James Meikle guardian.co.uk
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Accept the lead role in a musical and there’s nowhere to hide, Daniel Radcliffe. But somehow semi-competence is perfect here If this series proves anything, it is that the quality of people’s acting will always be a matter of opinion. Singing and dancing, on the other hand … Well, if you accept the lead role in a Broadway musical then there is only so much uncertainty to hide behind. As Daniel Radcliffe has just discovered. Two things emerge unanimously from the American reviews of his performance as the young window cleaner J Pierrepont Finch, who strives to scale the corporate pyramid in How to Succeed in Oh I Can’t Be Bothered You Type the Rest. The first thing: everybody wishes young Radcliffe well. The second thing: absolutely no one thinks he can sing. “As winningly game and diligent as he shows himself to be … he’s out of his league,” says Peter Marks in the Washington Post . “Radcliffe’s skills do not include showmanship, an attribute this slick part cries out for. Because carrying a tune is not the same as carrying a production, and merely talking fast does not a fast-talker make.” Joe Dziemianowicz in the New York Daily News concurs. “He shows off a pleasant singing voice,” Dziemianowicz says, “but he’s waxen and not animated enough to make Finch soar.” Even the show’s best review, in USA Today , comes to much the same conclusion. “Radcliffe relaxes enough to revel in the controlled chaos,” writes Elysa Gardner. “He also reveals, in the musical numbers, a serviceable tenor and sufficient rhythmic savvy to handle Frank Loesser’s jaunty, jazz-tinged score.” The problem, as everybody notes, is that, no matter how expertly he flaps around and gasps for breath, Radcliffe on Broadway remains a fish out of water. Or, to put it kindly – as Charles McNulty in the LA Times does – “an honest-to-goodness trouper”. “Gleaming with young-adult stardom,” McNulty continues, “Radcliffe gets an A for effort, but he doesn’t have the theatrical stature to pull together this choppy production.” In the New York Times, Ben Brantley is less indulgent. “I would give him, oh, a 6 out of 10,” he sighs, like a well-meaning but eternally disappointed maths teacher. “[Radcliffe] conscientiously hits his choreographic marks, speaks his lines quickly and distinctly (with a convincing American accent) and often sings on key … You truly want him to succeed, just as you hope a favorite athlete or hip-hop artist will avoid elimination on Dancing With the Stars. But you don’t particularly want his character in the show to succeed, and that really is a problem.” Yet, despite all this, with something that the less imaginative critics cannot resist calling wizardry, Radcliffe survives. Scott Brown at New York magazine , as he tends to, puts the matter well: “Radcliffe has often struck the ungenerous mind – mine, I mean – as a nice, lucky kid who was in the right place at the right time,” he says. “He was the boy who looked like Harry Potter, therefore Hollywood made him Harry Potter … Radcliffe, Equus aside, has always given off a just-happy-to-be-here vibe. He still does, and it might be his greatest asset here. For Finch is also a bit of a blank page, one that no one can resist filling with his or her obsessions.” Bingo! Radcliffe’s own semi-competence just happens to be suited perfectly for the part! “He doesn’t have to play the role like a Broadway wiseguy,” notes Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune , “he can play him as a risk-taking, flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kid. That feels like a pretty apt description of Radcliffe himself in his first Broadway musical. The hair-raising tour de force not only is great fun for everybody, but it also fits the themes of the piece.” So it looks as though Radcliffe, in the end, has come out ahead. Which makes this probably a good time to quit. Do say Wizard performance! Don’t say What, he isn’t naked ? The reviews reviewed Well done. Just. Daniel Radcliffe Broadway Theatre Musicals US press and publishing Leo Benedictus guardian.co.uk
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Alex Jones – March 28 2011 Soros’ Media Matters Declares War On Alternative Media Alex Jones Tv 2 2 Soros’ Media Matters Declares War On Alternative Media -1/2 28 Mar 2011 The KGB of the Left? Media Matters 'Sabatoge' War Against Fox … Politico has a story up about Media Matters that shows just how illegitimate, how low down, how filled with vitriol and hate its efforts to push George Sorros’ left-wing agenda is. Media Matters , you see, has quietly revamped its … media matters | TRENDS GOOGLE Media Matters for America (MMfA) is a progressive media watchdog group which describes itself as “dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. … Glenn Beck > :[ @ Media Matters | Mofo Politics Glenn Beck on “O’Reilly Factor” – 3/25/11 3 days ago; Glenn Beck goofs on Alex Jones, Charlie Sheen 3 days ago; Red Eye “Robot Theater” on Media Matters Boot Camp 5 days ago; Glenn Beck on “O’Reilly Factor” – 3/17/11 11 days ago … Media Matters Declares War Against Fox News | Hot News Today Information and news about Media Matters , the left wing media watchdog group, has dropped its mission of being a media critic, mostly of those it perceives as right wing venues, and in Hot News Today. The KGB of the Left? Media Matters 'Sabatoge' War Against Fox … Politico has a programme up most Media Matters that shows foregather how illegitimate, how baritone down, how filled with acid and dislike its efforts to near martyr Sorros’ left-wing itemize is. Media Matters , you see, … AbleGoodman says: RT @BreitbartVideo Rush: Media Matters ‘War On Fox’ Is Breaking The Law – They Are A Partisan Political Group: http://bit.ly/gFKLn0
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Diana Wynne Jones, who died this weekend, wrote some of our wittiest and warmest children’s books, from the Chrestomanci series to Howl’s Moving Castle. The world of children’s literature is a smaller, sadder place without her It’s rare these days that I make a detour into the children’s section of the bookshop. But when I do, it’s usually to see if there’s a new Diana Wynne Jones novel out, or if I have, mysteriously, managed to miss out on something she’s written in the past. And I always make sure to check under both the Js and the Ws, just in case. So I was hugely saddened to learn of the author’s death this weekend : the world of children’s literature is a smaller, sadder place without her witty, warm, ingenious presence. Rereading Wynne Jones’s novels as an adult, I am invariably overwhelmed with nostalgia. They feel intricately interwoven with my childhood: the Chrestomanci books with being nine and 10 and desperate to discover that, like Cat or Christopher Chant, I had a secret but super-powerful talent for magic (was anyone else convinced that if they tried hard enough they’d be able to cast a spell?); the sublime Fire and Hemlock with that awkward, pre-teen moment when romance becomes something desired, but never likely to actually happen ( Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover is another book that reminds me of this difficult, possibility-packed time of my life, and I think I’m still slightly in love with Mahy’s Sorry and Wynne Jones’s Tom). I was terrified of Monigan – an old rag doll which turns out to represent an ancient and hungry goddess – in The Time of the Ghost : still am, in fact. Power of Three was another favourite; I’d stride about the moor by my cousins’ home in Wales, glancing surreptitiously and hopefully around for the Dorig. And I decided that the butter-pies of A Tale of Time City (despite my previously mentioned aversion for time travel stories ) beat the hot-cold goodies of The Faraway Tree for top fictional food. (“Vivian was getting very tired of being called V.S. She would have objected if she had not at that moment bitten into the butter-pie. Wonderful tastes filled her mouth, everything buttery and creamy she had ever tasted, with just a hint of toffee, and twenty other even better tastes she had never met before, all of it icy cold. It was so marvellous that she simply said quietly, ‘You owe me an explanation. What were you trying to do?’ ‘Save Time City, of course,’ Sam said juicily out of the middle of his butter-pie.”) And I think my claustrophobia may partly stem from the scene in The Magicians of Caprona – purchased with a birthday book token, so very much treasured – in which Tonino and Angelica are turned into puppets and trapped in a cardboard box by the evil duchess (although, as I’ve said before, Alan Garner must also shoulder some of the blame ). “When Tonino came to his senses – at, incidentally, the precise moment when the enchanted book began to shrivel away – he had, at first, a nightmare feeling that he was shut in a cardboard box,” writes Wynne Jones. “He rolled his head sideways on his arms. He seemed to be lying on his face on a hard but faintly furry floor. In the far distance, he could blurrily see someone else, leaning up against a wall like a doll, but he felt too queer to be very interested in that. He rolled his head around the other way and saw the panels of a wall quite near. That told him he was in a fairly long room. He rolled his head to stare down at the furry floor. It was patterned, in a pattern too big for his eyes to grasp, and he supposed it was a carpet of some kind. He shut his blurry eyes and tried to think what had happened.” I can’t believe I missed Howl’s Moving Castle when I was younger – our library obviously wasn’t up to much. But I stumbled across it when perusing the Ws and Js in our local library last year, and was charmed by Sophie Hatter and her Howl (he probably would have been another crush if I’d read it young enough), and particularly by Calcifer. Top Diana Wynne Jones of all, though, for me, is The Lives of Christopher Chant . I read it again last year, and felt almost as excited as I did as a child when, relieved of the silver in his pockets which had been dampening his magic, Christopher lifts the roof off his tutor’s house. Stirring stuff. And isn’t Throgmorton the best possible name for a cat? Looking back, I can see the influence Wynne Jones’s books, burned deep into my memories when I was little, have had on my reading tastes. Discovering Christopher Chant and Chrestomanci for the first time made me realise just how good fiction could be, and I think she sowed the seeds for my future love of fantasy. I adore the work of a lot of children’s authors, and I tend to bang on about it a fair bit . But Diana Wynne Jones stands out from the crowd, for her humour, her originality and her touching, clever, rollickingly good stories – she’s 10 times the writer JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer ever will be, and I’m astonished to discover that, until Harry Potter took off and publishers realised how successful children’s fantasy could be, many of her books were out of print . At least they’re widely available now. And it turns out, studying her bibliography, I’ve still got some left to read. The Dalemark quartet , here I come. And Diana, here’s to you: to your sudden wild magic and to the books you’ve left behind. May they never go unread. Diana Wynne Jones Fiction Children and teenagers Children’s books: 8-12 years Teen books Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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